


Summer Solstice

by vermicious_knid



Category: Prisoners (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:18:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vermicious_knid/pseuds/vermicious_knid





	1. Chapter 1

 

The underbelly of the barn shifts with movement – but only just so. Beyond the cold dirt underneath, the grass moves sleepily with the wind. Empty tin cans litter just outside, and the jagged shards of green bottles peek up out of the earth like sprouts. But not too far away, there’s the sudden noise of heavy, hurried footsteps.

A child in a faded purple tunic and boots throws herself on the ground and bends her head in to look at us. Her face is split into a grin and her breath comes fast and heavy as if she’s been running. Her head settles on the ground in the dirt, a small hand reached in towards us and we shudder without knowing why.

Whatever it is she sees in the dark, it fills her face with exhilaration.

This will not always be so.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

_In the greenest of our valleys_

_By good angels tenanted,_

_Once a fair and stately palace-_

_Radiant palace- reared its head._

_In the monarch Thought's dominion-_

_It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion_

_Over fabric half so fair!_

 

\- Edgar Allen Poe, The Haunted Palace

 

* * *

 

 

She never realized that maybe she ought to have been in school, it didn’t even cross her mind. Why should she leave their home? Everything you could want was right there wasn’t it? She had three older playmates in her brothers, and there was the work that always needed doing – tending to the animals, harvesting, boxing up the eggs along with the rest of produce dad would sell in town. She didn't even think there could be other people, in her imagination perhaps. And mama couldn’t be left alone could she? What with her bad hip and hazy memory, who knew what kind of trouble she’d get into if her little protector wasn’t nearby watching her? So her daddy used to say when he praised her, ruffling her hair. Mama had a bad fall about a year ago then, and it was risky leaving her alone. 

The stretching brown plain that she pretended was the Sahara, a desert her father had told her about. Across it the wind was always hot, and there was _always_ wind. When it rained there was a lot of _oh lords_ , and _praise jesus_. She'd throw out her arms like her brothers and praise too, but secretly she never liked it wet. 

In the evenings daddy sometimes played the guitar, mouthing the words to a song he'd never sing while her mother sat in a wicker chair with her eyes closed, prayer beads clutched in her palm.

Nobody told her about the broken bottles stuck into the ground, or about the snakes which liked to rest in the shade under the house, dark scales which gleamed in sunlight. 

But it changed when her uncle visited around the time she turned eleven. She noted the way he was dressed – how his clothes fell without crinkles or any sign of outward tear, she thought he mustn’t have worn them for very long. His shirt was a summer sky blue. He asked her angrily where her mother was, He had seen her coming out of the field all dusty from the machine they used to upturn the earth for the new harvest. Her knees were a bit scrubbed, and her hair was heavy and greasy down her back. He stomped in through the faded screen door and yelled a lot of somethings to mama, mean things. Nobody ever yelled at her like that.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Georgia is nothing like the faded colors and heat she is used to. Here everything is sketched with stark shadows and shades of blue. People sag when they walk here, maybe it’s the neighborhood, or the rain. It seems like the cloudy skies has had a peculiar effect on everyone. There’s a sense of a storm just blown over, and people just can’t recover from it.

Without thinking really she looks for signs of faith, but that subject seems a silent one too. She spots a small wooden cross strung up in a rear-view mirror, a blue neon sign for a tiny inner-city chapel. It doesn’t bother her, but she can hear her mother clucking her tongue and see her shaking her head.

Her first day at the new district is kind of a blur, she remembers not finding a clean shirt to wear that morning and had to make do with one that had a patch of dirt on the elbow from playing football. She already knew that she’d be assisting one of the P.I’s , since she was training to be one herself. He doesn’t meet her by the entrance, so instead she takes a chance and yells out his name among the tiny cubicles until one head swerves into her direction. His dark eyes blink at her twice, rapidly. He looks confused, then he slowly stands up.

At first, Laura is loath to admit – she’s a little bit intimidated.

Then, she’s annoyed.

Loki leaves a lot of the leg work to her at first, for reasons she doesn’t understand. Okay so she’s the newbie and all, but it wouldn’t hurt if he came along once in a while. But there is no doubt in his dedication, she’s never seen him or heard him say “I’m going home for the night.” And she can bet that one light that’s always on in the office is from his desk. He admonishes her repeatedly for small things, thinks her reports are inconsistent when he wasn’t’ even on the scene at the time to have a valid opinion. There’s another one waiting on her desk as she steps in one morning, red marks all over it.

“What is this?” she asks, trying not to sound so _angry_.

It would have been so much more satisfying to be angry with him if he didn’t cower from her every time she tried to argue. Which also boggles her mind a bit, since she’s seen him almost malevolent in the interrogation room on several occasions now. Avoiding her eyes again he shrugs and speaks softly under his breath, not even looking away from his computer screen.

“You rushed through it, and there are several spelling mistakes.” She fumes, both because he’s right and because it’s a little bit humiliating and she’s got too much pride to say so.

“But I already submitted it to the archives!” is what she says instead.

He shrugs minutely and continues typing. There’s a picture of a dead child with his head submerged in murky water pinned to the wall near his head.

“Withdraw it then.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

There are 5 different cases of suspected arson that summer.

In three of the cases, the fire is put out before it has any time to spread.

In two of them, the structures burned down completely.

They all happen in June.

 

* * *

 

 

She’d always been tall for her age, almost like her brothers. They called her the beanpole for awhile, but never in a mean fashion. She’s a bit taller than her new partner, but it’s only just.

Something she observed silently about him was how different night and day portrayed him. When it was dark, it seemed to absorb him, around him. The way he didn’t prefer to stand near hazy streetlights and instead chose to linger in the car while she surveyed the area on foot. During the day he moved slower, when it was only his body that gave him strange predatory instincts he wasn’t aware of. He looked like those wax figures at dimly lit thrill rides at the fairground, not meant to be seen in so much light at once. Sunlight didn’t brighten his eyes, like it did with most people – instead it only highlighted the shadows painted on his face. But the orange chemicals from streetlamps creates macabre poetry of his features, as if he can only be beautiful when things around him are estranged and filthy.

He never talks unless it's about what they're doing, the investigation.

At the station she got almost pitying looks, being paired up with a nutjob and all. Not that anyone hated him outright, it just was what it was. When dusk came along with the cooler air it seemed to fill him with life and energy, and she never saw him drink coffee after 6 pm – as if the dark fed him somehow. Which was an entirely silly suggestion, from someone who wasn’t even remotely spiritually inclined. She’d told him as much anyway, but as she said this aloud she knew it had upset him somehow. It was so easy to say the wrong thing here, she noticed.

She still made the occasional cultural misstep, although it was a rarity now – after several years of a good education plus what she’d learned at the academy. The silence between in the patrol car – it’s pure agony. To her at least, the last district (her first district) she worked at was for a lack for a better word, _livelier_. Sure, at the station everyone is pretty friendly – but the moment he appears among the others it’s as if everything is drenched in the solemnity of a church. She hates that.

 

But what confuses her is that, she doesn’t hate _him_.

 


End file.
